Dealing with anxiety, fear and worry can be exhausting and it is hard to break the cycle when it seems like peace eludes you. But there is hope and we can ... break the cycle.

Anxiety has a way of grabbing hold of your mind and not letting go. You know what I am talking about ... you are lying in bed about to go to sleep and then in an instant you are hit with a slurry of anxious thoughts. All of sudden, your mind is spinning and your body starts to get jittery. The harder your fight those thoughts, the faster they come. You quickly spin into full blown panic.

So where do you start ... youaddress the trigger and the root. Understanding the triggers of those anxious thoughts is important. For me, I pray through what’s causing fear to arise within me ... is it a physical stress, like something I ate, or a mental stress, like negative thinking patterns. I have been practicing to take some time during or after my anxiety attack to write down my thoughts. I ask myself ... what were you thinking before the rush of anxiety? what emotions were you feeling and experiencing? was there something that happened during the day that caused you stress, or got you thinking about about something? This exercise is allowing me to see if I can start to recognize a pattern.

Also, I am realizing that getting to the root cause of anxiety, fear and worry is absolutely essential if I want to find true freedom. Most people stop at the first step. Once they find out what’s triggering the anxiety, they simply avoid those triggers without ever dealing with the root cause of the anxiousness. Yet, with the use of great books, prayers, teachings and blogs I begin to tear down the strongholds of fear and anxiety and learn how thoughts get lodged in my mind.

So if you find yourself in a similar predicament, here are some resources I use: